IPL trails Indian Poll League

Data released by viewership rating companies indicates more people watched the developments in the political arena than cricket on the first two days of the Indian Premier League. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 21, 2009, 01:38:05 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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When Home Minister P.Chidambaram announced on March 23 that elections were more important than cricket, the 64-year-old Congress leader could have been speaking for television audiences. At least that is what viewership figures for the first IPL weekend (over April 18 and 19) suggest.

Data released by viewership rating companies indicates more people watched the developments in the political arena than cricket on the first two days of the Indian Premier League (IPL).

Even as IPL viewership in season two has dropped, elections continue to be a hit. IPL this weekend got 3.5 television rating points. The evening political news did better with 3.6, data from Audience Measurement and Analytics (aMAP) of the six metros showed. In 2008, 70 lakh people watched T20 matches on the first two days — compared to 56 lakh this year.

According to P.N. Vasanti of the Centre for Media Studies, sports dominated politics in TV and print media through 2008. “But after the announcement of elections, politics has managed more space.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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